Ace the Kakasana

Kakasana or Crow Pose in English is a one of beginner pose in arm balancing. It is a tough pose for people who do not know how to engage the core muscle even for some yoga practitioner. I have been practising yoga for quite some time and still in the process of learning and trusting myself to perform it properly. Many yoga pose that actually not so fearful but the psychologically looks scary and takes time to master it.

To overcome the fear, first we have to know what is the main benefit of Bakasana pose. Mainly arm balancing pose helps us to strengthen the muscle in arm and also the most important thing is engaging core muscle so we can have a strong abdominal muscle. Besides physical benefit, Bakasana also have very important benefit which is it trained our focus, so we can learn to accepting our fear of falling. I have been learning to fly my crow pose which is one leg always can not lift, so scary because I always imagining my face on the floor…and it really happened many times. The key is keep on falling and keep on stand up and practice again and again.

For the beginner of yoga, practising Bakasana need some conditioning pose or warming up. Starting up with Surya Namaskara is always beneficial for warming up the body and also it is good to do some preparation pose such as

Hero pose or Virasana
Garland Pose or Malasana
Child pose or Balasana
Four Limb pose or Chaturanga Dandasana
This is the basic pose need to learn before we move forward in preparation for Bakasana.

Now is how start to do the Bakasana
1. Begin with Tadasana or mountain pose, keep the feet together then place your hands on the floor firmly widely shoulder apart. Your arms must be engaged because the arm will hold most of your body weight.
2. After that, lift your hip high and make sure your core especially abdominal muscle engage by pulling your belly button towards your spine and move your legs closer to your triceps or upper arms and put your knees on your upper triceps firmly. Bend your elbow 90° like in Chaturanga. By rounding your spine, try to squeeze your whole body especially your abdominal muscle into one.
3. Set your gaze forward and gently move front little by little and try lift your feet off one by one. If you feel stability, you can lift both feet and hold for this pose for one minute.
4. Finish this pose, by doing standing forward bend

Bakasana is very beneficial pose but not for everyone especially women in pregnancy because it can harm the baby inside the womb. Another one is people with carpal tunnel syndrome which is a common condition that causes pain, numbness and tingling sensation in the arm and hand. It is very serious medical problems which also affect the median nerve around the wrist. Can yoga cure it? 100% cure maybe no, but by practicing yoga especially hand, arm and wrist stretching and strengthening can lower the intensity of the symptoms.

Practicing Bakasana need faith, the faith to trust yourself that you can do it, an open door for many other advanced pose after mastering the basic arm balancing pose. Long way to go, yes…
But life is constant learning process is it?

” never let the fear of falling keep you from flying…”
Unknown proverbs